Recently, with improvements in the performance of portable terminals such as mobile telephones, a great many small-scale applications that start up simultaneously, known as widgets and gadgets, are emerging. Also, with improvements in line speed and greater reliability of networks that link mobile telephones to the internet, there is a proliferation of usage of temporarily downloading and using required applications rather than installing all of them, a proliferation of services that operate as applications on the server side, such as web applications and software as a service (SaaS), and a proliferation of application download-type thin clients, and the like. As a consequence, there has recently been a sharp increase in the number of usable applications on the user terminal.
However, when the number of applications increases, there is a problem that it becomes difficult for the user to ascertain the applications that can be used on the terminal. In particular, push-type applications and web applications are updated daily, and new applications sometimes become usable before the user has learned about them. Therefore, one conceivable solution is to determine applications that match the user's preferences and profiles based on context, and select and display suitable applications. Also, to handle a greatly increased number of applications, for example, Patent Document 1 discloses a technique of creating a herald to perform summarized notification of application updates and the like.